No relief for Pondicherry Institute of Medical Sciences students due to ‘wrong admissions’

’ The Madras High Court has dismissed an appeal moved by those students seeking to quash the special counselling held to fill 33 management quota seats at PIMS by calling upon all the 330 candidates in the list sponsored by CENTAC, which comprised students who failed to report for counselling.

A division bench comprising Justice TS Sivagnanam and Justice V Bhavani Subbaroyan on citing the Supreme Court order issued on October 9, 2018 that PIMS has committed irregularity in admission and imposed a cost of Rs 50 lakh, which the college has paid, said, “Thus, we may be fully justified in arriving at a conclusion that PIMS admitted that it committed a mistake in admitting 50 students that is 33 students under the Management quota as well as 17 students under the Government quota on October 31, 2018 on the ground that CENTAC has not forwarded the merit list.”

However, setting aside the submission by the Senior Counsel appearing for the petitioners that CENTAC erred in restricting the number of candidates, who are eligible to participate to only 330 is illegal and all the candidates should have been informed, the bench said, “There cannot be any equity in illegality. The Supreme Court having left the decision to CENTAC, to discontinue those students and substitute them with the available proper candidates as per merit, we can render no finding on the said submission.”

“Furthermore, we note that the Government of Puducherry as well as the CENTAC in their counter affidavit filed, has taken a specific stand that the names of the candidates has not been included in the merit list of willing candidates prepared by PIMS and consequently, they are not eligible for consideration for admission in the 50 increased seats in the said college,” the bench said while noting that as submitted by the Medical Council of India, there is no room for calling willingness of any candidates because the order of merit cannot be given a go-by.